Adventures in Public School

Director: Kyle Rideout
Year Released: 2017
Rating: 2.5

Physics whiz Liam (Daniel Doheny), homeschooled by his ultra-protective Apache helicopter mother Claire (Judy Greer), intentionally throws his General Equivalency Development test in order to attend public high school and try to woo a one-legged girl (Siobhan Williams) ... and maybe make friends too (since he has only two: Mom and Grammy). Sure, the plot is totally absurd (he "subs in" for a sick student ... which would never happen) and it doesn't add new ideas to the overpopulated teen genre, but to its credit it (a.) never takes itself seriously and (b.) takes the Oedipal content as far as it could go without veering into Louis Malle territory ... it's also funnier than one might expect, as the interplay between frantic Claire and sheltered Liam offers a good amount of (unhealthy) levity (there's also a neat scene with Russell Peters as the school counselor). The "public school" presented here is hyper-sanitized when compared to real world counterparts: the sole "hazing" Liam really gets is being shaken while urinating (ooooh! scary!).